Removing gaps by moving articles from group x to group x doesn't work

Removing gaps by moving articles from group x to group x doesn't work

[Hannu Koivisto]

Greetings,

I have an nnml group with several thousand articles.  The group has
about 100 ticked articles.  Whenever I enter the group, Gnus says:
"How many articles from xxxx (default 598):".  I recall this
happens because Gnus can't determine the correct number of articles
because of gaps in the nnml article numbering or something like
that and I also recall that moving all articles of the group to
that same group should remove those gaps and fix the situation.
However, if I do that, nothing changes --- it still prompts me
telling that there are 598 articles.  How can I fix the problem?

-- 
Hannu

Re: Removing gaps by moving articles from group x to group x doesn't work

[Toby Speight]

0> In article <87elxnjytm.fsf@lynx.ionific.com>,
0> Hannu Koivisto <URL:mailto:azure@iki.fi> ("Hannu") wrote:

Hannu> ... I also recall that moving all articles of the group to that same
Hannu> group should remove those gaps and fix the situation.  However, if I
Hannu> do that, nothing changes --- it still prompts me telling that there
Hannu> are 598 articles.  How can I fix the problem?

Are you sure you've moved *all* the articles?  Including dormant,
read, etc?  Enter the group with - RET (that's a minus, followed by
return), then M P a (`gnus-uu-mark-all') and B m.

If that doesn't work, create a scratch group, move all the articles
to it, then leave and re-enter the original group.  Re-entry will
only be possible if there are articles remaining to be moved.  When
no articles remain, move them all back to the original group; there
should be no gaps.

Other things that may help diagnose the problem - in the group
buffer, use G E to examine the group properties.  There shouldn't
be any references to out-of-range article numbers.  If there's a
bug, this may help narrow it down.

Re: Removing gaps by moving articles from group x to group x doesn't work

[Hannu Koivisto]

Toby Speight <streapadair@gmx.net> writes:

| Are you sure you've moved *all* the articles?  Including dormant,
| read, etc?  Enter the group with - RET (that's a minus, followed by
| return), then M P a (`gnus-uu-mark-all') and B m.

Yes, I did this.

| If that doesn't work, create a scratch group, move all the articles
| to it, then leave and re-enter the original group.  Re-entry will

I did this.  Now the _scratch group_ says it has 598 articles.
Also, the original group has no articles (I even checked the
directory), but now it says it has something like 8516 articles.
If I do 'G E', I see

("lists.cmucl.imp" 3
 ((1 . 9249)))

If I go and edit 1 . 9249 to 1 . 1, which I saw one empty group
had, and hit 'C-c C-c' and 'g', the group suddenly says in the
group buffer it has 8xxx articles.  If I do 'G E' again, I see 

("lists.cmucl.imp" 3
 ((1 . 9249)))

again, so my editing was "erased" somehow.  I'm not going to move
the articles from the scratch group back to the original group
until I figure what's going on here --- after all, shouldn't the
scratch group be ok too so that moving those articles to the
original group doesn't buy me anything in this sense?

-- 
Hannu

Re: Removing gaps by moving articles from group x to group x doesn't work

[ShengHuo ZHU]

Hannu Koivisto <azure@iki.fi> writes:

> If I go and edit 1 . 9249 to 1 . 1, which I saw one empty group
> had, and hit 'C-c C-c' and 'g', the group suddenly says in the
> group buffer it has 8xxx articles.  If I do 'G E' again, I see 

> ("lists.cmucl.imp" 3
>  ((1 . 9249)))
> 
> again, so my editing was "erased" somehow.  I'm not going to move
> the articles from the scratch group back to the original group
> until I figure what's going on here --- after all, shouldn't the
> scratch group be ok too so that moving those articles to the
> original group doesn't buy me anything in this sense?

It is because the active entry still exists. You can use `C-u G DEL'
to remove the group, then recreate it.

ShengHuo

-- 
(setq gnus-posting-styles '((".*" (signature-file "~/.signature"))))

Re: Removing gaps by moving articles from group x to group x doesn't work

[Hannu Koivisto]

ShengHuo ZHU <zsh@cs.rochester.edu> writes:

| It is because the active entry still exists. You can use `C-u G DEL'
| to remove the group, then recreate it.

Right.. so I removed the group this way, recreated it and moved all
the articles from the scratch group to the new group and still,
when I try to enter the new group, I get "How many articles from
lists.cmucl.imp (default 598): " prompt even the group has only 94
ticked articles (and thousands of read articles).  I upgraded to
the Gnus from CVS as of two minutes ago and got the same behaviour
with that too.  If I look at the group info I get with 'G E' I see
no references to articles outside the range.

-- 
Hannu

Re: Removing gaps by moving articles from group x to group x doesn't work

[Toby Speight]

0> In article <87puh5c6ar.fsf@lynx.ionific.com>,
0> Hannu Koivisto <URL:mailto:azure@iki.fi> ("Hannu") wrote:

Hannu> Right.. so I removed the group this way, recreated it and moved all
Hannu> the articles from the scratch group to the new group and still,
Hannu> when I try to enter the new group, I get "How many articles from
Hannu> lists.cmucl.imp (default 598): " prompt even the group has only 94
Hannu> ticked articles (and thousands of read articles).

Ah, you don't have holes in the numbering, then?  Just that your
ticked articles aren't contiguous?  That's not the problem the
renumbering aims to solve.

Re: Removing gaps by moving articles from group x to group x doesn't work

[Hannu Koivisto]

Toby Speight <streapadair@gmx.net> writes:

| Ah, you don't have holes in the numbering, then?  Just that your
| ticked articles aren't contiguous?

That's correct.

| That's not the problem the renumbering aims to solve.

Um, well, I didn't know that incontiguous ticked articles cause a
wrong article count to be displayed as well.  So how should I fix
this problem, then?

-- 
Hannu

Re: Removing gaps by moving articles from group x to group x doesn't work

[Harry Putnam]

Hannu Koivisto <azure@iki.fi> writes:

> Toby Speight <streapadair@gmx.net> writes:
> 
> | Ah, you don't have holes in the numbering, then?  Just that your
> | ticked articles aren't contiguous?
> 
> That's correct.
> 
> | That's not the problem the renumbering aims to solve.
> 
> Um, well, I didn't know that incontiguous ticked articles cause a
> wrong article count to be displayed as well.  So how should I fix
> this problem, then?

Hannu has clearly highlighted a long standing problem that has lead to
hundreds, probably thousands of posts in the last few years concering
the inaccurate message counts supplied by gnus.

Seems there would be some easy way to reset that group count number.
Especially in mail groups where the file numbers aren't as important.

I'm probably overlooking obvious problems but it seems to me a simple
call to `ls |wc -l' and then using that number to reset should be a
handy command somewhere in mail group commands.  Or maybe a secondary
number could be shown that is the `real' external  messages count kept
separate from gnus counting scheme.

How does one insert a user prompt into a simple `defun'  I think I'd
like to have one that does this:

 (defun hp-count-group ()
   "Run ls |wc -l on selected group" 
   (interactive)
   (shell-command "ls |wc -l" nil nil))

How would I insert something that prompts me for a group name in the above.

Re: Removing gaps by moving articles from group x to group x doesn't work

[Nevin Kapur]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2001, Hannu Koivisto wrote:

> Right.. so I removed the group this way, recreated it and moved all
> the articles from the scratch group to the new group and still,
> when I try to enter the new group, I get "How many articles from
> lists.cmucl.imp (default 598): " prompt even the group has only 94
> ticked articles (and thousands of read articles).  I upgraded to
> the Gnus from CVS as of two minutes ago and got the same behaviour
> with that too.  If I look at the group info I get with 'G E' I see
> no references to articles outside the range.

I'll hazard a guess. Do you have cached or dormant articles in this
group. I had similar problem, which was the result of a cached
article.
-- 
Nevin

Re: Removing gaps by moving articles from group x to group x doesn't work

[Kai Großjohann]

On 30 Jan 2001, Hannu Koivisto wrote:
> Toby Speight <streapadair@gmx.net> writes:
> 
>| Are you sure you've moved *all* the articles?  Including dormant,
>| read, etc?  Enter the group with - RET (that's a minus, followed by
>| return), then M P a (`gnus-uu-mark-all') and B m.
> 
> Yes, I did this.

Maybe there are cached articles in the group and you didn't move
those?  Look in ~/News/cache and/or type `Y c' to see the cached
articles.

kai
-- 
Be indiscrete.  Do it continuously.